One new type of imaging involves the capture of low intensity light from an object. A source of the light indicates a portion of the object where an activity of interest may be taking place. In one example, the object is a small animal such as a mouse and the light source includes tumor cells labeled with light emitting reporters such as firefly luciferase or fluorescent proteins or dyes. This technology is known as in vivo optical imaging.
Tomographic reconstruction in in vivo imaging builds a three-dimensional representation of the internal light source inside the surface of the object. Some tomographic reconstruction techniques rely on a three-dimensional representation of the object surface. Imaging small animals such as a mouse may require a new surface representation for each animal and each time the animal is imaged.
A system that allows a user to readily obtain a surface representation of an object is not currently available.